Alison Seabeck: It is a pleasure to follow what was a tour de force from the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland). Opposition Members appreciate his comments about the late Paul Goggins, and it goes without saying that most Members here will recognise his contribution to the new Bill. I will try to limit my speech to under 15 minutes, which was your original instruction—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman may well gasp in horror, but his speech was a tour de force and it was interesting, so I think we can live with it.
	This is a Government programme lite—what is not in it is as interesting as what is. Where are the measures designed seriously to address the concerns that were all too evident in the run-up to the last set of elections—concerns about the lack of affordable homes, especially in the south west where the income to mortgage ratio is only just below that of the south east, but where the incomes of people living full time, not in second homes, can be very low? The south west is jam-packed full of second homes. Fewer new homes were started in the south west in 2013 than in 2012. Where are the measures to tackle the undercutting of wages and the need to ensure that people working regular hours, month after month, get a regular contract? People in Plymouth have on average £19 a day less disposable cash than a Londoner. Taking into account some variations in food and prices, but without including mortgages and rents, those people
	feel a little aggrieved about life in general. They feel out of the loop. London and the big metropolitan centres are where it is happening, and some of the dissatisfaction is feeding into the mood that we are sensing on the doorstep.
	There is nothing in the Queen’s Speech to ensure that victims of domestic violence are not left in an unsafe property because of the bedroom tax rules, nor to protect those in rental properties from landlords who do not provide adequate fire protection and fixed smoke alarms. On that point, I draw the attention of the House to my indirect interests in those of my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford). The draft wild animals in circuses Bill has been dropped; people feel very strongly about that, and I have received a vast number of e-mails. They are deeply disappointed and we will need an explanation for that decision.
	Some proposed Bills are to be welcomed, including, finally, one to provide some action to end the misery of human trafficking. Some hon. Members who have already spoken have played a key role in that, as did the former Member Anthony Steen who represented a south-west seat and was a constituency neighbour of mine. He will be very pleased at last to see some of his hard work over many years leading to a measure on modern slavery, which I think will be interesting and have cross-party support.
	I also welcome the changes on pubcos and on plastic bag use, although the changes on pubcos do not go quite far enough for some of my publicans. I also welcome the introduction of a power of recall, unlike some of my colleagues.
	I was pleased to see that the Government have accepted the need for an ombudsman for the armed forces. The case for that was previously well made by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy) when he was the shadow Secretary of State for Defence, and the Government listening to Opposition proposals is naturally always welcome.
	However, the nitty-gritty of people’s lives has largely been ignored. When times are hard, I think we all look for somebody to blame, or something that explains why we feel we are walking through treacle and getting nowhere: it might be immigrants, who are blamed for taking jobs; it might be people who are overweight, who are the butt of troll-like comments on social media such as, “They should go on a diet and save the NHS money”; or it might be people claiming benefits, who are vilified by the media and described as “scroungers”. Deep, underlying concerns are voiced in difficult circumstances, but of course rationally we know that people with weight issues cannot all simply go on a diet and everything will be fine. We know from the issues thrown up by the bedroom tax that not everybody claiming a benefit is feckless and that instead the majority of them are low-paid, hard-working family people or those with disabilities, who genuinely need the state’s safety net.
	Equally, immigrants are not to blame for all our ills but actually contribute significantly to our country. We are a trading nation; we have been a trading nation for centuries. I was recently reminded of that by a member of our armed forces—somebody who is resident in Plymouth. He pointed out that we have travelled from these shores for centuries to colonise and conquer other
	nations, all in the economic interests of Great Britain, and that we have depended for our success as a nation on the movement of people to and from our shores.
	Nowadays, we see students coming here from overseas but they are viewed as immigrants, despite the fact that they are paying for their courses, paying rent to a landlord, paying for goods and services in our local shops, and paying tax on most of those purchases. They are also supporting our higher education sector and essential research needs. Recent changes in their status have been damaging to the higher education sector, and notwithstanding the need to tackle the foreign students who overstay and the bogus colleges, we need to regard students generally as a positive and not as a negative in our cities. In Plymouth, we have two universities with a significant number of overseas students, and it is quite disheartening that those students are sometimes seen as more of a problem for our city than a benefit to it.
	Of course, we should also remember that British people themselves have made up significant waves of immigration to other countries over generations and for a range of reasons. Some moved through choice; some to pursue an education in an international university; some because of persecution; and others for economic reasons. Indeed, I spoke today to a group of people from Plymouth, Massachusetts, as part of the plans for the Mayflower 2020 celebrations of the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrim Fathers heading out from Plymouth. Why did the Pilgrim Fathers leave this country? They chose to travel to somewhere else because they were being persecuted here in England. Movement of people to and from these shores has happened historically, and for a whole range of reasons.
	None of the Bills being introduced addresses people’s concerns. It is particularly important to target those who bring workers into the UK and undercut local workers in terms of salaries and conditions. They are the agents and others who are actively recruiting people, and dishonestly telling them that they have a job and accommodation. Quite frankly, too little is known about where these people operate, where they are coming from and where they are housing and employing some of the people they ship into this country. Some of those who bring people into this country will fall under the human trafficking Bill, but a lot of them will not. I have been told that in Plymouth and the south-west there is a taxi firm that employs drivers in the EU. We would think, “Okay, that’s fine, they’re from the EU. That shouldn’t be a problem.” However, that firm is training those drivers in the EU and then bringing them to the UK. It is not clear how and where the vetting is done or what is the source of the information, which is vital for the safety of passengers, particularly women. Would it be considered adequate in the UK?
	Frankly, I find it extraordinary that an employer would have to go overseas to find cab drivers, because there are people here who would very willingly do the work. Of course, the reason is startlingly simple: they can get the labour cheaper. That is the root of the problem that many people see with immigration. We need the measures proposed by the shadow Home Secretary to put a stop to this type of practice, which convinces people that all immigrants are here to take their jobs. If we can deal with the undercutting of
	wages, we will go a long way towards cutting out the benefits that some employers see in harvesting people from overseas and bringing them here to work.
	My constituents are very clear that we also need an effective mechanism to tackle a problem that we have had for centuries but not yet resolved: monitoring who comes into the country and who goes out. We still have no reliable system for ensuring that people are properly chased when their visas expire. In my view, and that of my constituents, it is important that even those coming from the EU should be properly counted in and out. We need exit checks, even allowing for free movement. Clearly that should also apply to the movement of vehicles, as other hon. Members have said.
	It is all the unknowns—the areas where information is not fully available and the facts are unknown—that naturally fuel people’s fears and insecurities. Why should the people of Plymouth have to rely on vague and inaccurate information about what is happening in their area? My hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) is right that we need practical measures of the type she described, not platitudes. We need truthfulness and reliable facts, as has been said on both sides of the House.
	I will move on from immigration and talk about domestic violence. Women’s groups such as Women’s Aid, Paladin and the Sara Charlton Charitable Foundation have flagged up the need for legislation specifically to tackle coercive control and behaviour in difficult relationships. The issue cuts across two pieces of legislation in the Queen’s Speech. One is the Modern Slavery Bill, because many of the people unfortunate enough to find themselves in that situation are undoubtedly subjected to coercive behaviour. The other is the Serious Crime Bill. I ask the Government to look very closely at the work being done by Women’s Aid and other groups to see whether there is any scope for bringing forward a measure that would make emotional cruelty a criminal offence. Such behaviour is often a precursor to violence and other types of abuse, and there is a strong belief that if we can tackle it in some way, we will prevent worse behaviour further down the line and save money. I ask the Minister to look at that in due course.
	I did not agree with everything the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) said, but I agreed with his comments on the social action, responsibility and heroism Bill. Having been a lifeguard for nine years, I used my skills mostly when people had heart attacks in the street or on trains. The hon. Gentleman’s assessment is that people find it difficult to intervene. I once stepped off a bus and found a lady lying on the pavement in front of me. There was a group of people around her, but none of them had done anything. Some of them said, “I don’t want to be sued.” I am afraid that our very British values of not crossing the road in such circumstances have been subsumed beneath an Atlantic, American, litigious attitude to everything. If, through this Bill, we can make people feel a little more confident, that could make a difference in their acting to save lives and take action where appropriate.
	The biggest failure in the Queen’s Speech is in not bringing forward measures to reward hard work, to ensure new homes are built, to stop privatisation of the NHS, or to freeze energy bills. That says a lot about the ability of this lame-duck coalition Government to really deliver for the people of this country.